Mitt’s New ‘I Care’ Message Makes a Pretty Good Case… for Obamacare

September 27, 2012

Mitt Romney, slipping in the polls after his bizarre dismissal of 47 percent of the American people as a “dependent” class with which he would not concern himself, has come up with a new tactic to revive his ailing campaign: compassion.

By embracing healthcare reforms that use the power of government to assure that Americans who have no insurance protection—or inadequate insurance—are provided with access to the coverage and the care they need.

“Don’t forget—I got everybody in my state insured,” Romney told NBC News while campaigning in Toledo, Ohio. “One hundred percent of the kids in our state had health insurance. I don’t think there’s anything that shows more empathy and care about the people of this country than that kind of record.”

Give Mitt his due.

As governor of Massachusetts, he did indeed establish a statewide program to expand access to healthcare. He was so associated with the program that it’s come to be known as “Romneycare.”

But let’s accept that working to enact them qualifies as evidence of at least some degree of empathy.

So Romney cares—or, at the least, he cared.

And Obama cares.

The political question that remains to be resolved is this: How does Mitt Romney argue that Americans should vote for him because he cared about those who needed healthcare in Massachusetts while Romney is, at the same time, arguing that Americans should not vote for Barack Obama because he cared about those who needed healthcare in the other forty-nine states?